out it her iPhone to leave the body anonymous. Before the hicks’ labors be over—if ever—the woods gulpers would care about making her one with Nature.

Then I collected my backpack a couple meters off. Thoroughly drenched…

A week later, I raised the lid of my notebook. And put her iPhone next to it.

Unbelievable, yet hacking her password took 3 days. It was neither her name nor the birth date, nor the name of her Prince Charming she played mamas-and-papas at high school but some hard nut to crack.

Well, not much of interesting stuff in that iPhone, except for Passwords file in the Documents folder…

To log in MoM I typed her user-name and password."Hi, Bart!" affably greeted me MoM interface.

I attached Squid and scribbled in half-broken spaghetti:

"Hi, my name is V and I am a murderer."

A minute later there popped up capitalized response,"GOT IT".

Whatever future awaits this here squirrel, it would be free of boredom.

Bet your farm…”

* * *

26

’Pull up at the corner,’ said V to the taxi driver. He paid and stepped out onto the sidewalk then crossed it to assume the attitude of a loafer idling his time.

The passers-by thronged along the wide sidewalk, the infinite variety of their rags and faces afloat in the pacing waves, on, and on, and on. They walked, in twos and threes, and all alone, rubbing their shoulders with other passers-by. Talking business, chatting with their gossips or phones, some talking to themselves, for that was a usual everyday crowd, all kinds of sorts, walking on. On they were carrying their casual-wear masks of maps wrought to be put on in public, masks accustomed to, appropriate for the usage when you’re a particle in the stream flowing by V leaned onto the wall behind his back unobtrusive, both he and the wall, no obstacle for their counter-directed currents. Because he was a good-humored sociopath as we, hopefully, have mentioned or learn it right now, if we have not.

Yep. There he stood calmly waiting for her to appear, in his attitude of a character from an old naive romance or a movie, forgotten, black-and-white, would wait for the sail to emerge up in the distant horizon.

Was he in love? Shut up, dude! The word is tabooed in the current millennium. Well, he, most definitely liked her (much more effing acceptable, huh?). He liked her and waited for her to pass by this corner because he knew exactly where she goes to and, off any particular business, he wanted to walk by her side the final leg to her destination, to stroll along in the same wave of the streaming crowd.

Yes! I told you, huh? He now discerns her figure at about a quarter-block off. She walks along wearing her personal mask for public occasions (the world is just a theater, eh?), the countenance dimmed by the distance like the features in the visage of the earth’s satellite.

He liked and admired the intent in her purposeful strides and though her legs per se were screened by the preceding waves of pedestrians, he still knew they were classy, the legs were. Even though he couldn’t make out yet if she had jeans or a skirt on. He just knew it. Patience, V, all comes at the rightest moment.

’Hi, Leya! Making for the common, I gather? Mind a modest companion?;

’O, hi, V! How are you?’

(Yes, it’s a skirt and a lovely one, not a mini yet her knees, these heartbreaker knees are decently visible.)

’Fine, thank you. Looking for a means to kill a spare hour, you know’.

V felt something snapped his pant leg.

’Hi, babe!’ He stooped overt to pick up from the pavement a shaggy pooch.

Toto issued a happy alacritous yap and licked V’s nose with her cute shifty tongue the color of pink beryl.

                                                                                                             ¿The End?